Fears

[chenoameg]

There are a bunch of things I'm not doing because I'm afraid of doing them, or of trying to do them and failing? I decided I would list them here and see if that makes some of them more manageable.

1. write up this list and share it with y'all
   
2. write down all of our expenses (aka make a budget again; we had one we followed closely until technology

Comments

[marcusmarcusrc]

Some of the things I'm most afraid of doing are too personal to list here, but there are some I am willing to talk about:

1) A general category of doing things that involve disappointing other people: eg, calling or emailing people to tell them that we don't have a position for them, or that I won't be accepting a position, etc. Also, I hate interacting with people after I think I've disappointed them (probably a little parallel to firstfrost's story)
2) Any difficult task is magnified by having it happen over the phone
3) Thinking about actually taking a faculty position somewhere (I turned down one offer a couple years ago, which was hard because of my first fear, and if I'm going to apply again I need to have some confidence that I'd be willing to take a position I was offered despite fear of the tenure process and the responsibility of having grad students. This is half imposter-syndrome, half hard-work-avoidance, and half fear-of-ruining-other-people's-lives-due-to-my-own-failures. Also fear of ending up living someplace that isn't DC or Boston and having to make friends yet again).
4) I fear even getting to the point of deciding to have kids, much less having them. (see my foropldtmof fear in part 3. Also the fear of hard work in part 3).